Friday, August 20, 2010

Bored to Death His Whole Life

Olam keminhago noheg, the Talmud says: the world acts according to its custom. Such a view is not “conservatism” or “realism,” but something more fundamental—the condition of all responsible thinking about change, which is, after all, also a regular feature of the world; and of course a warning about counterfeit salvations. There are realms in which the character of the inherited world is even a warrant for hope. But not for Obama. “He’s been bored to death his whole life,” Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick, in one of the most unwittingly damning remarks anybody ever heard. The poor man: he should come in, the water’s fine—and it’s our water, the water we have. Jarrett added that “he’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.” So the overman, whose admirers like to disdain his predecessor for hubris, set out to start everything over.